San Diego  The La Jolla Playhouse-launched “Memphis” rocked its way into major Tony Awards contention Tuesday with eight nominations in the annual Broadway theater honors.

The show about the birth of rock ’n’ roll, which had its world premiere at the Playhouse in 2008, was named in virtually all the top Tony categories. Only “Fela!” and “La Cage Aux Folles” had more nods among musicals, with 11 each. “Fences” was the top-nominated play with 10.

It also was the most nominations for a show developed in San Diego since the Playhouse’s “Jersey Boys” earned eight in 2006 and the Old Globe’s “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” nabbed 11 the previous year.

“Memphis” is one of more than three dozen works that San Diego has exported to Broadway over the past few decades, giving the city national recognition as a pipeline to New York.

Besides the coveted best-musical prize, “Memphis” will be in the mix for book, score, director, male and female lead performances, costumes and orchestrations when the Tonys are presented June 13 in New York.

“It’s fantastic,” said Playhouse artistic chief Christopher Ashley, who earned his second Tony nomination as a director. “I’m smiling from ear to ear. It was exactly what I had hoped for, but you never really know. My feeling is you sort of have to be patient and see what unfolds.”

“Memphis,” a coproduction of the Playhouse and Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre, was the first show Ashley directed for La Jolla after he joined the theater in October 2007. It had its world premiere at the Playhouse in September 2008, was restaged in Seattle the following winter, then hit Broadway in fall 2009. It has done steady business since, grossing a total of about $18.2 million as of last weekend. It also has spawned a planned national tour.

The show is inspired by the true story of Dewey Phillips, an ebullient 1950s radio DJ who dared to play “race music” — songs by black artists — on the white-dominated airwaves, and thus helped launch the rock ’n’ roll revolution.

The show’s book and lyrics are by Joe DiPietro — who wrote the long-running off-Broadway show “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” — with music composed by David Bryan, the keyboardist for the band Bon Jovi.

Chad Kimball, who played the lead character Huey in La Jolla, and Montego Glover, who portrayed the fiery R&B singer Felicia, earned Tony nominations for reprising those roles on Broadway. The show’s other nods are for Paul Tazewell’s costumes and the orchestrations by Daryl Waters and Bryan.

The show took more than seven years to develop, with Ashley coming aboard in 2006. That history with the work “makes it extra-emotional, these moments where people say ‘Great job,’ ” Ashley said yesterday from New York, where he is directing another Playhouse-originated work, the off-Broadway play “Restoration.”

“Any musical takes so many years to get to Broadway. And this one’s had a really long journey,” Ashley said. “The fact that on this one I was not only the director, but a producer (of the show) at La Jolla — the journey ends up feeling long, but wow, is it worth it at moments like this.”

The top Tony nominee among new musicals, “Fela!,” tells the story of the late Nigerian musician and activist Fela Kuti. Produced in part by rap artist Jay-Z and actors Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, it will compete for best musical with “Memphis”; “Million Dollar Quartet,” about a legendary 1956 jam session among Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash in (as it happens) Memphis; and “American Idiot,” based on the concept album by the band Green Day.

Lillias White is nominated as best featured actress for her role in “Fela!”; she appeared at San Diego Rep in late 2008 in the musical “The Princess and the Black-Eyed Pea.” Among other locally connected nominees is Maria Dizzia, a 2001 alumna of UCSD’s masters in fine arts program, who was tapped for her performance in Sarah Ruhl’s best-play nominee “In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play.”

The other nominees for best play are Geoffrey Nauffts’ “Next Fall,” John Logan’s “Red” and Donald Margulies’ “Time Stands Still.” Besides “Fences,” the nominees for best revival of a play are “Lend Me a Tenor,” “The Royal Family” and “A View From the Bridge.”